The operational story is one Monday. The recovery story is twenty-eight months.
Dates follow Paris police, Uffizi and Louvre public chronology.
Timeline
- Taken from the Louvre
Leonardo's portrait leaves the Salon Carré. The empty wall is noticed the next day and becomes a European news story.
- Apollinaire arrested
The poet is held over a separate Louvre sculpture theft by an acquaintance. Picasso is questioned. Both are cleared of the Mona Lisa.
- Press reproductions
Newspapers circulate the face worldwide as a missing object. Mass recognition of the smile dates to this gap.
- Geri and the Uffizi
A man offering the painting contacts Florentine dealer Alfredo Geri. Uffizi director Giovanni Poggi examines the panel.
- Peruggia arrested
Vincenzo Peruggia is arrested in Florence. The portrait is authenticated as the Louvre's Leonardo.
- Shown in Italy
Italian crowds see the recovered picture before its return, a brief patriotic display that does not change legal title.
- Returned to the Louvre
The panel comes back to Paris. Visitor numbers and souvenir reproductions jump. The pilgrimage picture is born.
- Florence conviction
A Florentine court convicts Peruggia. The term is short. He has offered a patriotic motive that does not give him title.
- Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q.
A postcard joke assumes the face is already common property — evidence of the theft's cultural afterlife.
- Salle des États crowds
The painting's modern bulletproof hang and ticketed crowds are the long echo of 1911–14 fame, not of a still-missing work.
After January 1914 the timeline is celebrity, not recovery.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.